


Militat Omnis Amans

by bigstarkenergy



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Post-Avengers: Age of Ultron (Movie), Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-11
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-16 02:01:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16944861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigstarkenergy/pseuds/bigstarkenergy
Summary: Falling in love with Steve Rogers had been inevitable.It’d been….well, it’d been everything. Everything at once, all too much, and all too quickly, and all too slow. It’d been everything Tony had had ever felt, compressed into a single person.It wasn’t even a question, really. It sure as hell wasn’t a choice. Tony didn’t even know what choice he’d make if it had been a choice.





	1. Chapter 1

 Falling in love with Steve Rogers had been inevitable.

It’d been….well, it’d been everything. Everything at once, all too much, and all too quickly, and all too slow. It’d been everything Tony had had ever felt, compressed into a single person.

It wasn’t even a question, really. It sure as hell wasn’t a choice. Tony didn’t even know what choice he’d make if it _had_ been a choice.

Some days, it felt like loving Steve Rogers had been the best thing he’d ever done, regardless of whether it was a choice. Other days, Tony was nearly a thousand percent sure that loving Steve Rogers had been the worst decision of his life. Not that it was much of a decision.

But, either way, it’d been inevitable. Aside from being an absolute prick, Steve was...well, Steve. And he’d cared. Tony had no idea why, it wasn’t like he’d given him much of a reason to, but Steve had cared. And Tony didn’t have too many people that cared about him.

So, loving Steve Rogers had felt more like an inevitability. Something that Tony was an active participant in, the sole and only member of the club, but it hadn’t felt like his choice to join or start it.

On more occasions than one, Tony had wondered if it was some kind of cosmic joke. He’d survived kidnappings, assassination attempts, bombs, aliens in the fucking sky, but he didn’t know if he’d survive loving another human being.

Sometimes, the pain in his chest would hurt more than when he woke up with someone else’s hands in his body in a godforsaken cave in Afghanistan. Sometimes, he wanted to claw at his heart until he could rip it out of his body and throw it across the room, just so that it would finally, if only for a second, stop aching.

He thinks back to the beginning.

Not the helicarrier, not the teamwork to fix it. The battle. The aftermath.

Falling from the sky, scared, alone, and so deeply in pain. He’d opened his eyes, and the first thing he saw was Steve Rogers, looking down at him, relief, gratitude, and happiness in his eyes. In that moment, Tony was struck with just how young Steve was. He looked like he should be on a college campus, in some fraternity. But he wasn’t. Instead, he was underneath the sky, where a portal to space had just opened up, fighting in a war that he’d never asked for, just after ending a very different one.

Humanity, Tony thought. Always, always, ready to start another war.

He fell in love with Steve Rogers that day. It was a fact, just as he knew that his eyes were brown, just as he knew Kepler’s laws, just as he knew Saturn’s mass, he knew.

It would be foolish to claim otherwise. Although, nothing he ever did in conjunction to Rogers had ever been particularly wise.

He hadn’t wanted to. He hadn’t even thought about it, until Steve mentioned that he would be leaving for D.C, where Fury wanted him.

“Stay,” Tony had blurted out.

Steve looked up at him, aprehnsion and weariness in his eyes. “What?”

“Stay. Here, in New York.”

“Why?”

It was a perfectly valid question, one that Tony did not have a perfectly valid answer to. It wasn’t like you could tell a man that hated you, that thought you hated him, that you were almost certainly, harboring feelings that did not border on hate, nor friendship.

Tony had shrugged. “Easier this way, right? All of us, together? For future threats?”

Later, Tony would find that funny, for reasons that were neither humorous nor amusing.

Steve had looked him up and down, as if Tony was sick, then he’d given the smallest shift in his shoulders, in a motion that Tony choose to interpret as a shrug. “I’ll think about it.”

Those were the words that Tony clung to when Pepper packed up the last of her things and moved into a nice house somewhere on the West Coast. And, surprisingly, Steve had stayed. They never mentioned it, they never spoke about it, but he’d stayed. Selfishly, Tony liked to think that it had the slightest bit to do with him.

Later, Tony would wish that Steve had packed up, and taken his shield with him. Walked out the doors, and they would part as teammates, as people who fought together every once in a while, not as...whatever the hell they were now.

It wouldn’t have changed a thing, though. Tony would have still loved him. He thinks, in almost every universe, in some way, he would have loved Steve Rogers.

 

They fall into a dance. Tony isn’t sure if Steve knows or not. Sometimes, Steve will spit out a cutting remark, and all Tony can think about is the way his eyes look when he’s angry, his pupils small, the blue of his eyes flashing. He’s still beautiful, even when he’s angry. Maybe especially when he’s angry.

It doesn’t stop Tony from yelling back though, and they establish a routine.

Sometimes, he picks fights with Steve just so that Steve will look at him, will feel something, anything. Most of the time though, Steve just looks lost. Sad, melancholy. Man out of time is correct, Tony thinks.

Steve Rogers was never made for this century, wasn’t made for this world that had taken his sacrifice and shoved into a trunk somewhere, off to make a deal with the devil. He’d fought in a war, he’d nearly ended it, and yet, when he woke up, they’d asked him to put on the uniform and do it all over again. And he had. Without a single question, without a single thought.

Because that was who he was. And Tony? Well, Tony was the type of person who created murderous robots hell bent on destroying the earth.

It’s funny, Tony thinks, in a way that is neither funny nor lighthearted, that Ultron’s biggest goal was to kill him. Tony had designed Ultron, had written his code himself. Turns out that self-loathing isn’t nearly as private when you create artificial intelligences that hate you. After Ultron, Tony is sure that Steve’ll never look him in the eyes again. Steve does though, and it doesn’t have a note of the disrespect or the hatred that Tony had been anticipating. Just sadness.

He drives away, and tries not to look back at the retreating figure of Steve in his rear-view mirrors. As he watches his silhouette fade away, he thinks of Steve’s pulse beneath his fingers, thready and practically non-existent, as he chokes out that Tony is responsible for his death.

Tony’s grip on the steering wheel gets tighter as his heartbeat grows erratic. He’s a man who has everything, money, fame, power, and yet the one thing he wants, the one person he wants, he can’t have.

But he wants. He wants mornings and nights, and everything in between. He wants Steve’s dry, sarcastic humor, he wants his soft smiles, the ones that seem to surprise even him. He wants Steve’s anger and his sadness too. He wants every part of him, he wants so badly that it feels as if his chest burns deep inside, a fire that Tony feels will never ever stop.

But Tony learned long ago that very rarely do people ever get what they want, and very rarely did Tony ever get anything he wanted.

So, he pushes Steve out his mind, at least, as much as he can. He focuses on Stark Industries, rebuilds his relationship with Pepper. They’re friends now, and Tony is a better man for it.

On lonely nights, with nothing but an empty bottle and an empty glass in hand, Tony thinks that he was never meant to love someone. He’s a human fucking tragedy, a one man-greek play.

It isn’t a funny thought, but Tony laughs regardless. Nothing is funny anymore, not when he falls asleep every night thinking of blue, blue eyes, blonde hair, and a voice that tells him he should take care of himself.

Go fuck yourself, he whispers to his empty room. He pushes his hand into his chest, and the ache subsides. He falls asleep like that, hand digging into his chest, knees drawn up towards his torso.

Some days, the ache is better than others. Most days though, it runs through him, a steady, constant thrum. It feels like someone is pulling, hammering, tugging below his heart. He knows where it’ll lead him if he follows it.

He misses Steve, though. As if it weren’t obvious for the fucking tugging in his chest. He misses them all, Banner and Thor and even the wonder twins.

He doesn’t do a thing about it. He’s Tony Stark. He’s not worth their affection, not after what he’s done. And he knows a thing or two about missing people. It’s just the intensity that takes him aback. The way in which he wants, yearns. He falls asleep at the thought of sad eyes and graceful movements, at the thought of “together” and the mistakes he’s made. He falls asleep in an empty bed, in an empty room.

He wakes up with an ache in his chest and a truth that he’s too scared, too worried, too weak to do a thing about.

Loving Steve Rogers had never been a choice, at least not for Tony Stark. Like most things in his life, it’d simply been.


	2. It simply is.

Even after, he still loves him.

He tries not too, tries harder than he’s ever tried in his entire life, but it doesn’t work. He thinks of Steve’s eyes, wary and sad, then, bright and happy. He thinks of Steve’s hands, slamming that stupid fucking shield into Tony’s chest, and his hands, sketching in a pad in Tony’s workshop. He thinks of his voice, the one that Tony used to think about to fall asleep, the same voice he hears in his dreams now, except, now, instead of soft kisses and warm embraces, he dreams of blood and ice.

After Afghanistan, Tony had hated the heat. Pepper had always complained that the mansion was too cold, and Bruce had always walked around in sweatpants and a hoodie when he came to visit Tony in the tower. Steve hadn’t liked it either, but Tony prefered to keep his thoughts regarding Steve to a minimum.

Just because he hadn’t stopped loving him didn’t mean he had to stop hating him. The two weren’t mutually exclusive, Tony had quickly learned. He could love Steve Rogers with just as much fervor as he could hate him.

But now, he hates the cold. Hates it with a mind-numbing passion, hates the way it steals your breath and leaves you gasping, hates the way it seeps through your bones and your blood, hates the way it takes him back to an abandoned bunker where the man he’d loved had nearly killed him.

In his darker moments, of which there are many, he wishes, silently, desperately, that Steve had. At least then, he wouldn’t have to deal with the aftermath. He remembers the look in Steve’s eyes, and that alone is enough to make Tony shiver. The pure, unadulterated focus there. Tony had thought he would die, then. Die, in Siberia, of all fucking places, with the shield of the man he’s in love with in his chest. When Tony thinks about it, he can still taste the blood in his mouth, the ice in his veins. He isn’t a man who scares easy, but the look in Steve’s eyes had chilled him to the bone.

On the outside though, he’s great. He’s just fine. No one knows when he has a panic attack in his basement when he sees the shield peeking out of a corner. No one knows when he smashes a bottle against the wall, watching its amber contents spill out onto the floor. No one knows that he cries over a prototype of a new shield. No one knows that he doesn’t drink, but there are hundreds of nights where he wishes he could. But he doesn’t, because even though he hates him, Steve’s voice still fills his head, sadly telling Tony that he should take care of himself.

Fuck off, Tony whispers back, but it’s in vain, because he pushes his liquor bottles up onto a higher shelf, and tells Jarvis to lock it indefinitely.

Even when Steve is gone, he manages to hurt Tony.

It’s not surprising, really. If Tony thinks about it, wanting Steve, loving him, has never made him happy. But then again, that’s the crux of the matter. He didn’t have a choice.

He didn’t have a say in his parents death. He didn’t have a say in one of the events that shaped his entire life. He didn’t have a choice then, when he first began loving Steve, and he doesn’t have a choice now.

It’s in Siberia, on a cold stone floor, with snow and ice and blood around him, when Tony first wishes that he never met Steve Rogers. It’s then, with cracks in his armor, and a broken heart, when Tony truly, for the first time, closes his eyes and wishes with everything he has, that he never fell in love with Steve Rogers.

But people very rarely get what they want, and very rarely does Tony ever get anything he wants.

He sits there, waiting for Rhodey, or whoever he’d called, he’s forgotten, to come get him, trying to ignore the pain in his legs, his side, his bones, his chest.

It does nothing for the ache in Tony’s chest though. If anything, that grows stronger, burning, flickering, a bonfire inside Tony, the only warm thing in the frozen tundra around him. He feels it consume him, and he feels it grow and grow, burning its way through his stomach and his throat. He fights the urge to throw up, it’ll hurt too much to. He closes his eyes, because the shield rests a few feet in front of him, and he can still hear it clanging against the stone, loud and final.

He closes his eyes, and he wishes, because he is too old and too young for praying, that he never met Steve Rogers. That he never fell in love with him.

It’s four years before he sees Steve again. On that day, he is sure. He is sure, that he could survive space and death and kidnappings and torture, but he will not survive this. But, like almost all things in Tony Stark’s life, it isn’t a choice.

It simply is.

 

He’s right. He’s right about millions of things in his lifetime, almost all of them, he’s proud of, but this one, he wants to take it back, wants it to disappear, wants it to fall down a fucking hole and undo its place in time.

He will not survive this. Thanos is gone, dead, defeated, Tony doesn’t care, and he managed to hug the kid again, to tell him he’s sorry. That’s almost enough.

Almost.

If it weren’t for Steve. Steve, who shows up in a beard, his eyes sad and lost and guarded, his posture straight. Steve, who Tony wants to drag into bed with him, to hold him and hug him. Steve, who nods at Tony, quickly, then looks away. Tony feels his heart break, at that.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t expect it. He just didn’t _want_ it.

It’s days like that, where Tony doesn’t know if he wants Steve to disappear into thin air, or if he wants Steve to wrap his arms around him and whisper that they’ll be okay. It’s days like that, where Tony misses the simplicity of college, where Rhodey would punch him, then hug him, briefly, and they’d play Mario Kart until Tony didn’t feel sad anymore.

But then he looks back at Steve, who is doing everything in his fucking power not to look at Tony. Tony feels as if he is being cut in two, but he squares his shoulders and turns back to the plan. Somewhere, along the way, maybe a broken heart or two ago, he became someone who listened to orders. The thought barely affects him.

All he feels is loss.

And now, Tony just feels cold. And sad. And desperate. There is a jagged, long, at least 3 feet piece of metal piercing through his side. He’d been stabbed, a year ago, by Thanos himself. Looking down, Tony thinks, briefly, that he is almost glad. He is tired. He is tired of living, tired of feeling guilty, tired of looking down at his hands and only seeing red, tired of the ache in his chest, that will never, ever stop.

Almost. Almost glad. Because there’s Steve. There’s always Steve. Steve who’s kneeling besides Tony, screaming, yelling, and Tony can’t hear a damn thing. He reaches up with his left hand, which sends a wave of pain through him, and grabs whatever he can. Steve turns back to him, his eyes wide, frantic, and Tony thinks, briefly, that he’s never seen Steve this scared.

Tony is dying, and there is one secret that he doesn’t want to take to the grave.

 _“I love you,”_ he says, but he doesn’t hear the words, doesn’t see Steve’s face, doesn’t see anything. He goes limp in Steve’s arms, and the last thing he remembers seeing is the sky above him, blue and cloudless.

In a different world, he dies in Steve’s arms, but they’re much older and much happier. There’s no blood, and they’re smiling at each other.

But in this world, Tony dies in Steve’s arms without ever knowing if Steve heard him say his last words. There’s no rhyme, no reason. There’s no choice, no decision. Like all things in Tony’s life, it simply is.

 


	3. Chapter 3

Tony doesn’t die. When he takes his first breath, though, he wishes he did. 

It slams into him, the shock, and horror and fear. God, Tony has never been scared like this. He’d been scared when he’d woken up with metal in his chest, scared when he flew through a wormhole to space, scared when he’d held a rock up in the middle of the sky, but he’d never been scared like this.

It consumes him, fear, spreading from his chest to his fingertips, racing down his skin, setting his heart on fire. The pain is nothing compared to this fear.

Tony had been dying, and maybe he was sick of lies, maybe he was sick of a world where Steve Rogers couldn’t look him in the fucking eye, he was sick of a universe where there was no  _ us _ , only you, and I. He was sick of a world where he had to pretend that it wasn’t Steve who he fell asleep thinking about, that it wasn’t Steve who he dreamed about. He was sick of pretending, he was sick of lies, he was sick of it all.

Loving Steve Rogers had never been his choice. At this point, it was simply a part of who he was. It wasn’t a decision, it wasn’t a thought. It was as much a part of Tony as his suits were, an extension of himself, something he could live without, but something he would never feel complete without. 

Tony loved Steve with his entire being, with every fiber in his soul, with every possible intonation of emotion he had. It would be lying to say otherwise, and Tony was sick of lies.

He blinks his eyes open, and sees a slumped, blue figure next to him, sleeping. The pain flares back up again, and Tony’s vision goes black once again.

The next time he wakes up, he stays awake long enough to make out that it is Steve next to him, his eyes tired, unfocused. Tony stays as still as possible. He drifts back to sleep, and Tony is grateful for it.

When he wakes up, truly wakes up, Steve is at the window facing his bed. He stands up, and Tony can see him through the window, his hair wild, his eyes frantic. For the first time in 4 years, Tony lets himself look at Steve. 

He’s always been beautiful, but here, on the bed that could have, should have, been his deathbed, Tony allows himself to truly appreciate what that means. He’s spent far too long depriving himself of what he wanted, and god, does he want. He wants to run his hands through Steve’s hair, which still looks ridiculously soft, which isn’t fucking fair. He wants to trace his thumbs down Steve’s cheekbones, he wants to suck on Steve’s lips until they turn red, he wants to see if Steve’s blush goes down to his chest, he wants to touch him, he wants to kiss him, he  _ wants _ . 

But, far too soon, Steve is gone, gone from where Tony can see him, can dream, can think. Nurses come into his room not too soon after, checking and fussing and asking him questions.

He answers, to the best of his ability. He watches, waits, for Steve to come back, and it nearly kills him when he realizes that Steve isn’t going to.

Tony doesn’t cry, doesn’t have it in him to, but he wants to. He wants to sob, to scream, to yell, to get into a fight, he wants anything. Anything that means that Steve cares. 

The fear is replaced by anger, by sadness, by grief. Tony had always known Steve hadn’t felt the same way, but maybe, just maybe, Steve would want to be friends again. 

It wouldn’t be enough, but at this point, Tony would take anything Steve offered to him. 

Days pass, people flit by, smiling faces and euphoric grins, and Tony smiles, talks, but he feels none of it. His chest aches, his body hurts, and at night, when no one can hear him, he cries. 

The 3 feet piece of metal embedded in his side hadn’t been enough to kill him, but this might. This could. This, after everything, this would be enough.

Steve comes on the 10th day. His eyes are dark, his beard is longer, and his hands are shaking. He looks, for lack of a better word, terrified. He looks as scared as Tony feels, which doesn’t actually provide much comfort.

He steps into Tony’s room, eyes watching Tony’s every move, and Tony feels the fear re-emerge, licking at his heart, tugging at his stomach, and suddenly, Tony wants to be anywhere but in this small hospital room, he would rather be drunk, or lost somewhere, anywhere but here.

Steve stands, at the foot of Tony’s hospital bed, taking in Tony’s sick, bruised form. He looks worried, Tony notes, in the part of his brain that isn’t trying to keep Tony from yanking his IV line out and running as far away as possible. 

Steve opens his mouth, to say something, then closes it. It’s frustrating, and since Tony is still Tony, despite being in love with him, despite the hole in his side, despite the past 4 years, he speaks first.

“Come on, out with it.”

Steve looks up at him then, and their eyes meet. Tony is vaguely reminded of the first time he truly looked Steve in the eyes, on a flying ship, back when he hadn’t known about aliens, back when the world was a truly, truly much simpler universe. This still feels like a fight, but Tony is tired, and he softens his gaze.

Steve nods, once, then locks his jaw, eyes set. It’s the same look Tony’s seen him have before charging into battle, the same look on his face in that fucking bunker in Siberia, the same look on his face in that airport. 

But when he speaks, his voice isn’t clear and steady. It’s hoarse, as if he hasn’t spoken in a while, and it wavers. 

“Did you mean it?”

Tony knows instantly what Steve’s talking about, and suddenly, the fear crashes into him, overwhelms him, and Tony can taste blood in his mouth, can feel his heartbeat in his ears, can feel his hands clenching into the thin bed sheets, can feel the bile rising in his throat.

A thousand lies cross his mind,  _ no, of course not. I was dying, Rogers, cut me some slack. I thought you were someone else. I was speaking to the ghost of my mother, Rogers.  _

His blood rushes through his ears, and Tony settles on truth. Because he’s sick of lies. Because he’s sick of pretending that he could ever do anything but love Steve Rogers. Because he’s sick of acting as if this won’t kill him. Because he’s sick of everything and everyone, and he just wants to  _ know _ . 

Because he’s weak, and loving Steve Rogers was never a choice.

“Yes.”

Four years ago, Steve had said that same word to Tony, and it’d flipped his world upside down, it’d erased everything he thought he’d ever known. But four years ago seems like two lifetimes ago, and Tony can’t bring himself to care anymore.

Steve takes a deep breath in, and the emotions that flash across his face are unreadable, but the pain is evident. Tony has seen Steve get shot without looking so hurt.

The fear is ever present, a force on his chest, a pressure in his ears, a muffled ache in his heart. 

Tony wants to open his mouth, to make a joke, to say something, anything, but he can’t. He can’t, because his throat is filled with tears, and his heart hurts more than anything has ever hurt, and he thinks, silently, to himself, that any hope he would ever survive this was a wish cast to the wrong god.

He just wants Steve to leave, to go, because he’s still staring at Tony, as if he can’t believe Tony had the audacity to love him, to ever believe that he could be something, anything, to Steve Rogers.

 

“I love you,” Tony chokes out, biting back the tears, the pain, the torrents that consume him. The words burn, they sting, but they’re true, and Tony feels the ache in his chest lessen.

Steve’s still staring at him, his hands shaking, his eyes wild, desperate, and that’s when Tony notices that Steve is crying. Out of everything, he didn’t expect that. He speaks, softly, almost a whisper, and Tony leans forward slightly to hear it.

“I would have let you, you know, if he hadn’t been there.”

“What?” Tony asks.

Steve looks up to meet his eyes again, and they’re glistening with tears, ocean blue and so sad, so deeply sad that Tony wishes he’d never seen them. “I would have let you kill me that day, if he hadn’t been there.”

There’s a vice grip around Tony’s heart, and it’s squeezing and squeezing, because Tony can’t breathe. 

Tony doesn’t know what to say, so the beat of silence stretches, until he decides on what he knows. The truth. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

Steve’s eyes flash at that, and Tony catches a glimpse of something, something unconstricted, something wild and free. Hope.

“I love you,” Steve says, staring at Tony, and he’s braced like he’s waiting for a blow, and the vice grip is still tight around Tony’s heart and lungs, because he can’t breathe. The fear in his body, the mind-numbing fear, the pain and the loss, they turn into want and anger, and sadness and love. Tony has never felt more, never had this onslaught of emotions.

“You what?” he hears himself ask. 

“I love you,” Steve repeats, his jaw set, his eyes locked onto Tony’s. 

Tony waits for Steve to laugh and go “I’m joking,” but he doesn’t, he just stays, transfixed, staring at Tony. 

“You can’t,” Tony finally says.

“Why not?”

“Because you left,” Tony says, and he is reminded that just because he loves Steve it does not mean he cannot hate him too. 

Steve flinches back, as if the words cause him pain, and a sick, twisted part of Tony thinks that he deserves it. “I never wanted to, Tony.”

Tony’s name on Steve’s lips feels like a blessing and a curse all at once. “You hurt me,” Tony says, simply, plainly, and this time, Steve doesn’t even bother trying to hide the pain.

His eyes well, and tears drip down his cheeks, and Tony is filled with the overwhelming desire to reach out and brush them away, to kiss his eyelids, to hold Steve and whisper that everything’ll be okay. He doesn’t, though, because loving someone with all of your soul doesn’t mean that you can’t hate them with all of it either.

“I’m sorry, Tony, I’m so sorry, I never wanted to.”

Tony shuts his eyes as the vice grip around his heart tightens even more. He’s not sure if the apologies are helping are not. He opens them again when Steve starts talking.

“I’m just going to say this, and then you can tell me to go fuck myself, or you can tell me to go away, or you can tell me you wish I’d died, but I’m just going to say this, okay?” Steve says, and his gaze pins him down, until Tony nods wordlessly.

“I missed you. Every day. And some nights, some days, it felt like the guilt was going to kill me, and if it didn’t, sometimes, I wish it would. Because I hurt you, and I know I did, but I’ve loved you for years, Tony. And I never, ever, wanted to hurt you. And I know I lied to you, and I know you have no reason to trust me, but please believe me when I say that I never wanted to hurt you, and if you gave me a chance, I promise that I would never do it on purpose again. Because I love you.”

Tony stares in shock. Steve takes a deep breath and nods at Tony, that curt, polite nod that Tony hates, before turning around and starting to walk towards the door.

“Wait.”

Steve turns back around, and Tony would have to be blind to miss the way Steve is trembling, tears still clinging to his eyelashes. 

“Okay.”

Steve’s brow furrows, and Tony fights the urge to laugh, because he’d forgotten how much Steve loved to do that, and he’d forgotten how much he loved it. “Okay what?”

“Okay. Okay, I’ll give you a second chance. Okay, I forgive you.”

Steve’s eyes grow wide, and Tony can see the hope he saw earlier rearing its head. “But you...are you sure?”

“No,” Tony says, just as simply. He’s done playing games. He doesn’t have time for it. All he has is the truth, and the undeniable fact that he loves Steve Rogers. “But I’m not sure about anything. And all I know is that I was dying, and I wanted you to know that I loved you. Because I do. I love you, Steve.”

Steve’s eyes flash again, and Tony is reminded of just how beautiful they are. Steve is closer to him now, at the side of his bed. Steve takes a breath, and Tony can hear it catch in his throat.

“Okay,” he whispers back, just as soft, just as hesitant. Then, a smile spreads across his face, and it takes Tony’s breath away. 

It’s been four years since Tony has seen Steve smile, and in the back of his mind, he thinks that it was almost worth it. He is brought back to the moments before he fell out of a hole in space, looking up at Steve Rogers smiling down at him, and the vice grip tightens again, except this time, it feels less like pain and more like nostalgia, less like regret and more like melancholy.

He musters up a smile back, and shifts slightly, and Steve takes the offer, climbing into the bed beside him, and Tony moves so that his head rests underneath Steve’s, his back against his chest. 

Steve presses a soft, barely there kiss to the top of Tony’s head as his cards his fingers through Tony’s hair. “I love you,” Steve whispers, and a flood of warmth surges through Tony, melting any last broken pieces of ice. 

“I love you,” Tony whispers back, his eyes fluttering closed. He is so tired, and for the first time in four years, he feels safe. 

In the back of his mind, just before he falls asleep, he thinks of the sound of Steve’s heartbeat, steady and constant, and he thinks that even though this is uncharted territory, it feels more like home than anything else Tony has ever had. 

Loving Steve Rogers had never been a choice, but it had also been the best damn decision Tony had ever made. 

**Author's Note:**

> The title roughly translates to: Every lover is a soldier. Love is war.
> 
> If you liked this, you'll probably like my other, much happier writings over on tumblr @bigstarkenergy.
> 
> Kudos/Comments make me very happy.


End file.
